Pretty Productive Week

Lots of good stuff has been going on this week.

I’ve gotten lots of things done around the house, and I’ve been working steadily and successfully on my writing.

Runs have been okay…I’ve been tired this week, so I’ve tried to keep my trail runs to about an hour. I ran an hour at St. Ed’s on Monday, about 1:12 at the HCTR’s Walnut Creek run Tuesday morning (which felt tougher than usual, what with the first 50 minutes of the run being in the dark), and an hour at last night’s HCTR Wednesday night ramble (I cut it short when I felt off, opting to take Cedar Chop when the rest of the group headed on down the old powerline loop).

Today, my friend Tracy showed me some new trails in a neighborhood, and our run stretched to about an hour and a half, including time spent looking at fossils, the trail map, local scenery, and checking out bathrooms at a park.

I felt pretty pokey, but I’d much rather feel a little off on a fun trail run than out on the road somewhere.

I have one of my longest runs coming up this weekend. I’d like to do about a 4:30 to 5:00 trail run. This weekend and next weekend are peak weeks for my Palo Duro Trail Run 50K training; after that, I will taper off until race day.  The race suddenly seems to have gotten very close.

Taking on a 100-Miler

A friend of mine’s husband did the Leadville 100 miler, the “race across the sky,” the other week (she crewed for him), and I just read their race reports. Man, I cannot tell you how inspiring they were. I think completing a 100-miler is turning into a burning desire for me. If the 50 miler in February goes well, I may abandon any interest in revisiting Ironman in the near future and instead focus on this goal. Of course, I’d need to do a 100K first, and I’d love that to be the 100K out at Bandera.

For the last few years, I’ve done things because I enjoyed the people who wanted to do them, while the events themselves were not something that particularly called to me. The 100, however, is speaking directly to me. You know it’s a strong desire when you don’t care if anybody else has any remote interest in running the race with you.

And you know what: maybe I’m cocky or an idiot or naive, but I know I could finish 100 miles. I just have to get fast enough to do it in the time frame they allot. Like Sisson said to me at the Leadville Trail Marathon — I’d just run out of race. Right now, I’d just run out of time.